“You taught me language, and my profit on’t is I know how to curse.” “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine” In the following I am going to discuss Pseudo-Intellectuals. There is a danger and a delicacy in talking about this topic. The danger is of course that it becomes [...]
At our autumn 2022 conference, we learned about the school of Abraham. Among other things, Abraham exemplifies critical thinking and action. He exposed the foundational assumptions of the Chaldean religion and then, by contrast, came to know true basic beliefs and then changed his life to live accordingly. We often have a very simple view [...]
If you survey the “proofs for God’s existence” in the contemporary philosophy of religion, you will see that they are derivatives of arguments like Aquinas’s Five Ways. There is an unmoved mover. There is a moral governor. There is an uncaused cause. Or, perhaps you will find those using arguments from the Transcendentalists and Vedantists [...]
Would you like to have an Aristotelian education? And is this education compatible with Christianity? Much is made about looking to this great philosopher. But his basic beliefs about origins, human nature, and our highest good, need rational examination. Aristotle was a systematizer and apologist for the pagan religion. When I see Christians speaking about [...]
I was speaking to a friend who is in construction. He works on finishing houses after the foundation has already been laid. He tells me that he is often called to a job for his part, but he soon realizes that the foundation has not been correctly laid, and he will not be able to [...]
At the General Revelation Institute, we have taken the motto: By faith we understand. This is from Hebrews 11:3, where we are told that the ancients understood creation ex nihilo. God alone has existed without beginning, and God created all else. But the creation is not formed from something pre-existent. It is created by God. [...]
Have you ever heard of the Reformed rejection of philosophy? The idea is that philosophy or natural theology is not necessary because it is not salvific, or because it is less clear than scripture so we may as well just go to scripture, or because it leads to apostasy as in evolution and Marxism. In [...]
At our Spring 2021 GRI conference, Greg Malloy presented an argument he has developed to show that neither matter nor the soul have existed without beginning. This is because they are changing, and whatever is changing cannot be eternal. Below is a dialogue he wrote to help explain his argument. -- Good morning to [...]
How do you know if you love God? Here's a problem: I find that people with conflicting definitions of "God" all say they love God. This means that some of them love a fantasy that is not real. So the first thing to sort out is what is God and how do we know God [...]
“How do you know that?” This is one of the most common questions you will hear. And that makes sense because most of the time when we speak we claim to know something. But what does it mean to know? This problem is one of authority: By what authority do you say that? If [...]
